Elvis didn’t want to be in Barbra Streisand’s A Star Is Born: ‘Get me out of this Colonel’ | Films | Entertainment
During his final years, Elvis Presley was considering a Hollywood movie return, wanting to establish himself as an Oscars-worthy actor. In 1974, Barbra Streisand, with whom he had shared Las Vegas residences, approached The King about co-starring with her in a remake of A Star Is Born.
This missed opportunity features in one of the final scenes of Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis movie set in 1974, when The King tells his ex-wife Priscilla Presley that negotiations had fallen apart because of his manager Colonel Tom Parker.
Speaking in a new Q&A, Elvis’ cousin Billy Smith said: “They wanted him to star in it and so they were trying to work out some kind of deal and Elvis, he [originally] actually wanted to do it. But he would have taken second billing as co-star, not star.”
However, he claimed that The Colonel was positive about The King starring in the movie, but only if he was given top billing, Although this wasn’t going to happen as the star hadn’t made a movie since 1969’s A Change of Habit.
Elvis’ last surviving original Memphis Mafia member said: “And of course then it got down to the money and that wasn’t right so they just wouldn’t do it. They just chopped it off.”
In the end, Kris Kristofferson was cast in what would have been Elvis’ role in A Star Is Born and the film was nominated for four Oscars, winning Best Original Song for its love theme Evergreen.
It wasn’t the only Academy Award-winning film The King had missed out on. He was set to co-star opposite John Wayne’s Rooster Cogburn as La Boeuf in 1969’s True Grit. Yet the role went to Glen Campbell, who was nominated for a Golden Globe in the role.
